Apple will give the ailing newspaper biz welcome news with an iPad subscription option, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The deal will likely see Apple taking a slice of both subscription and advertising revenues, instead of a flat fee.

Interestingly, Roger Fidler of University of Missouri's Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute speculates Apple will also generate cash through an opt-in demographic sharing function, giving publishers and advertisers access to your ever-coveted personal information. But while newspapers are of course eager to hop aboard the iPad money train, Fidler speculates they may be anxious about crossing over too quickly: "Most publishers don't want to see a rapid migration to apps without a comparable growth in advertisement revenue from tablet editions. That would be disastrous." [San Jose Mercury News viaMacRumors]